What's the best way to handle Django's objects.get?

Question

Whenever I do this:

thepost = Content.objects.get(name="test")

It always throws an error when nothing is found. How do I handle it?

Answer 1

try:
    thepost = Content.objects.get(name="test")
except Content.DoesNotExist:
    thepost = None

Use the model DoesNotExist exception

Answer 2

Often, it is more useful to use the Django shortcut function get_object_or_404 instead of the API directly:

from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404

thepost = get_object_or_404(Content, name='test')

Fairly obviously, this will throw a 404 error if the object cannot be found, and your code will continue if it is successful.

Answer 3

You can also catch a generic DoesNotExist. As per the docs at http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/models/querysets/

from django.core.exceptions import ObjectDoesNotExist
try:
    e = Entry.objects.get(id=3)
    b = Blog.objects.get(id=1)
except ObjectDoesNotExist:
    print "Either the entry or blog doesn't exist."